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BusinessConference
[ July 8, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

🎭 Behind the Curtain at CASA: Who Actually Shows Up?

At CASA, we don’t do hype. No flashy expo booths. No sales slides. No filler.

Just real conversations with the people shaping the future of communications.

But who exactly are these people?

We looked back at the attendees of CASA23 and CASA24. And while we always knew the vibe in the room was special, the data confirms it.

🧠 A Gathering of Senior Minds

CASA isn’t just another industry event. It’s where the decision-makers show up:

  • 67% of participants held senior roles — C-level execs, VPs, founders, or heads of strategy, product, and innovation.
  • Another 18% were experienced mid-level leads — the people turning strategy into execution.
  • Junior attendees? Just 3%.
  • The remaining 12% included expert advisors, consultants, or industry analysts.

This level of seniority makes CASA truly unique. You’re not explaining ideas to the room — you’re shaping them with peers who can drive change.

📚 Curated Content. Zero Sales Slides.

We keep the quality high on purpose:

Every session is moderated by independent analysts from firms like STL Partners, IDC, Mobilesquared, S&P Global, and more. Speakers are chosen for what they’ve built, not what they’re selling. It’s strictly a no sales decks zone — just insight, stories, and hard-earned lessons.

🧬 Real Cross-Functional Collaboration

Unlike single-track tech expos or go-to-market meetups, CASA creates cross-functional collisions:

  • 42% of attendees were technical leaders: CTOs, engineers, architects, and product heads.
  • 39% were commercial minds: marketing, partnerships, CX, and growth leads.
  • 19% came from broader functions: investment, regulation, consulting, and transformation.

The best results? They came from companies who sent both commercial and technical leads — who left CASA aligned and already acting on what they heard.

🕯️ It Starts Before Day One — At the CAVE Dinner

The most strategic conversations often start the night before CASA even begins — at the CAVE dinner, our private pre-event gathering for senior members and special guests.

No microphones. No formality. Just unfiltered dialogue between the people driving transformation across CPaaS, AI, cloud comms, and the broader telco ecosystem.

It’s where partnerships form, ideas are challenged, and where the tone for the rest of CASA is set.

🌍 Diverse, Curated, and Always Evolving

Across CASA23 and CASA24, we welcomed over 120 companies from:

  • Tier-1/2 telcos, CSPs and CPaaS platforms
  • Global hyperscalers and AI startups
  • Security, orchestration, and CX leaders
  • Strategy firms, investors, and regulators

Every edition is intentionally sized, with a curated guest list. It’s not about quantity. It’s about quality and conversations that matter.

🚪What’s Next?

CASA25 is happening this September in Amsterdam.

If you’re building what’s next — in telco, AI, communications, or cloud — you’ll want to be in the room. Not just to listen. But to participate, shape, and connect.

And don’t come alone.

Bring your product lead. Bring your commercial lead. Bring your partners.

The more perspectives you bring, the more value you unlock.

This isn’t a conference.

It’s where the future gets debated — and decided.

[ July 2, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

Why CASA25 Matters Now More Than Ever: A Conversation with Mike Mills, Managing Director at Gamma

With innovation accelerating and change reshaping every layer of the communications stack, industry leaders are seeking clarity, collaboration, and momentum. That’s exactly why CASA25 is shaping up to be the event of the year for the cloud communications and CPaaS ecosystem.

In a recent CPaaSAA Talk, we sat down with Mike Mills, Managing Director at Gamma, a gold sponsor of the event, to explore why this moment—and this event—matter so much.

🔄 A Changing Landscape Demands a Fresh Perspective

From Mike’s perspective, CPaaS isn’t just another growth area—it’s central to Gamma’s long-term service provider strategy. Over the past decade, Gamma has supported the evolution of CPaaS from simple messaging infrastructure to customer engagement platforms and intelligent, AI-driven experiences.

Joining the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance earlier this year was a natural fit. Sponsoring CASA25 takes that one step further: “For us, it’s about showing that we’re a key part of the CPaaS supply chain, that we understand the business model, and that we’re investing in building capabilities that support the ecosystem at scale,” said Mike.

🌍 Building a Pan-European Powerhouse — With Germany at the Core

Gamma’s recent moves make it clear they’re not just expanding—they’re orchestrating. Over the past 18 months, the company has:

  • Acquired Placetel from Cisco, adding 260,000 cloud UC seats across 35,000 German SMEs.
  • Acquired STARFACE Group GmbH, a leading IP telephony and PBX provider, adding another 210,000 cloud PBX seats.
  • Integrated Coolwave, bringing in global telco and number capabilities.
  • Built a modern wholesale network tailored to CPaaS, CCaaS, and cloud providers.
  • Expanded enterprise offerings via BrightCloud and other acquisitions.

Together, these moves create a flexible, regionally attuned go-to-market engine. As Mike explained, “Germany is a huge opportunity—but also a tough one. You need real scale and local credibility. With Placetel and STARFACE, we now have both.”

CASA25 will be one of the first opportunities for the ecosystem to see how these acquisitions fit together—and how Gamma is turning them into a platform for global CX enablement.

🧠 Trends Driving Transformation: APIs, Automation, and Agentic AI

When asked about the key trends shaping the channel and partner landscape, Mike didn’t hesitate. First, he pointed to the growing importance of Network APIs as a way for telcos to finally monetize core infrastructure—and how Gamma is focused on enabling real-time, API-first number provisioning and messaging orchestration.

“CPaaS and CCaaS providers are demanding deeper automation,” he noted. “They want to go from order to delivery in minutes, not days.”

But perhaps the biggest shift? The rise of agentic AI—not just as a CX disruptor, but as a driver of consolidation, optimization, and entirely new operating models.

Mike sees AI driving:

  • Automation across the entire comms stack.
  • Fraud detection and security in telco networks.
  • Smarter, faster network provisioning and scaling.
  • Increased productivity through tools like Copilot at the individual level.

“We’re already using AI to shape strategic plans, define operating models, and free up teams from repetitive tasks,” he shared. “The compound impact of that across an organization is enormous.”

📣 CASA25: The Right Conversations, With the Right People

For Gamma, CASA25 is more than a speaking opportunity—it’s a platform to engage with peers, partners, and innovators at a moment of inflection.

“This event brings together CPaaS players, telcos, CX platforms, and AI innovators all in one place,” Mike said. “That’s where the future is being built.”

From network APIs and channel transformation to customer engagement, automation, and AI readiness, CASA25 is where the real conversations will happen—away from vendor booths and hype decks, and closer to what actually matters.

🎟 Join the Conversation

Gamma will be on stage, on site, and in the mix at CASA25 this September in Amsterdam. With two days of deep-dive workshops, high-impact sessions, and the industry’s most forward-thinking voices, this is one event you don’t want to miss.

If you’re a service provider, platform builder, or telco leader looking to stay ahead of the curve—we’ll see you there.

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ConferenceWorkshop
[ June 29, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

vCon Foundation Joins CASA25: Shaping the Future of Conversation Intelligence

We’re thrilled to announce that the vCon Foundation is joining CASA25 as an official sponsor—joining the ranks of other ecosystem pioneers like GSMA Open Gateway—to lead the charge on a technology that’s quietly becoming one of the most transformative forces in communications: virtual conversations (vCons).

At this year’s CASA25, the vCon Foundation will be on stage, in the workshops, and in the conversations that matter most—introducing the vCon standard to the CPaaS and cloud communications community, and showing how this deceptively simple innovation could redefine how we store, share, and build on business conversations.

And we’re not exaggerating when we say: this could be as big as SIP, SMS, or CPaaS itself.

What Are vCons—and Why Should You Care?

A vCon is a structured, portable, and machine-readable container for all the data around a conversation: audio, transcripts, participants, metadata, and even AI insights like summaries or sentiment. Think of it as the PDF or vCard for business conversations.

Today, most calls, messages, and meetings are lost to siloed systems, raw audio files, or disconnected transcripts. vCons change that. They allow platforms, enterprises, and AI tools to treat conversations as first-class data objects—with context, structure, and continuity.

And that changes everything.

Why It Matters to the CPaaS Ecosystem

At CPaaSAA, we believe that AI is only as powerful as the data it learns from. And right now, conversation data is mostly unstructured and unusable. vCons unlock that value.

For CPaaS and CCaaS providers, vCons enable:

Plug-and-play conversation intelligence: Any AI model, from any vendor, can read and analyze vCons—accelerating innovation without locking customers in. Unified customer journeys across voice, chat, video, and messaging. Compliance and governance by tracking consent, redacting sensitive data, and storing audit-ready records. Interoperability that breaks down vendor silos and unlocks new business models. And perhaps most importantly: AI with memory.

As we shift from automation to autonomy, the ability to give AI agents persistent, structured memory across interactions becomes the foundation for everything else. vCons are that memory layer.

Why CPaaSAA Is Getting Behind This

As with Network APIs, CPaaSAA believes the real opportunity isn’t just in the tech—it’s in how we connect it to ecosystems, use cases, and adoption at scale.

That’s why we’re excited to welcome the vCon Foundation to CASA25—not just as a sponsor, but as a co-creator of the next wave of programmable communications.

Throughout CASA25, the vCon Foundation will:

Speak on the main stage about the business impact of vCons and real-world use cases already underway. Host a hands-on workshop showing developers and vendors how to build with vCons. Meet with key CPaaSAA members to discuss integration paths, pilots, and co-investment opportunities.

We’ve seen this movie before: standards start quietly, get adopted by a few visionary players, and then become the foundation for multi-billion-dollar ecosystems. That’s what happened with SIP. With SMS. With WebRTC. With CPaaS itself.

vCon is next.

Join Us in Amsterdam

CASA25 is where insiders shape what comes next. We’re proud to have the vCon Foundation as a partner on that journey—and we invite you to come learn, build, and help define the standards that will power the future of voice, video, messaging, and AI.

If you’re building anything in communications, customer experience, or AI-driven engagement—you need to understand vCons.

Let’s make it happen, together.

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Conference
[ June 24, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

Intelligent Engagement: The Core Theme Driving CASA25

Intelligent Engagement isn’t just a theme for CASA25—it’s becoming the strategic north star for the entire cloud communications industry. Whether you’re building CPaaS platforms, launching new AI experiences, or orchestrating APIs and workflows across channels, the message is clear: real-time, context-rich, intelligent interactions are what set the next generation of communication apart.

That vision got a powerful boost this month with RingCentral’s new whitepaper, Beyond CPaaS: Harnessing the Full Potential of Integrated Communications Platforms. It’s packed with data showing how integrated, AI-powered platforms aren’t just nice-to-have—they’re measurably transforming business outcomes.

💡 From CPaaS to Intelligent Engagement

According to RingCentral:

“The fundamental value of CPaaS lies in its ability to transform communications into a strategic business asset. By providing a flexible, scalable platform for integrating various communication channels into existing applications and workflows, CPaaS enables businesses to create tailored experiences for both customers and employees.”

That’s exactly the foundation Intelligent Engagement is built on: combining APIs, automation, and AI to deliver real-time decisions, deeper customer relationships, and faster go-to-market execution. The report notes:

  • Up to 45% cost savings vs. traditional communication tools
  • 72% faster time-to-market for new features
  • 10,000+ daily SMS messages and 1,200+ digital faxes automated by just one user (Senderra RX)

🎯 Why It Matters for CASA25

At CASA25, Intelligent Engagement will serve as the connective tissue across all themes—from Telco APIs and AI orchestration to security, trust, and convergence. You’ll hear from members and partners who are applying these principles across every layer of the stack:

AI: from contact center automation to intelligent routing and conversation intelligence Network APIs: providing the underlying signals that make engagement contextual and real-time CPaaS/UCaaS/CCaaS convergence: not just stitched together, but natively intelligent

🔁 Real Use Cases, Real Impact

This isn’t theory. It’s happening now—in healthcare, financial services, retail, and education. RingCentral’s examples show how intelligent engagement works across industries. And at CASA25, we’ll see new demos, share results from working groups, and explore what comes next—from agentic AI to programmable customer journeys.

Now What?

So if you’re still thinking of CPaaS as just APIs, or AI as a chatbot plugin—it’s time to zoom out. Intelligent Engagement is the new lens for strategy, investment, and innovation in cloud communications.

See you in Amsterdam. This year, we’re not just talking—we’re doing.

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Conference
[ June 14, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

CASA25 is taking shape: Meet our first sponsors and speakers

The countdown to CASA25 has officially begun—and we’re excited to share the first wave of confirmed sponsors and speakers helping us kick things off.

We’re proud to welcome Gamma, Twilio, McKinsey, Radisys, GSMA and Five9 as our first sponsors. It’s a powerful mix of innovation, strategy, and global influence—and it sets the tone for what CASA25 is all about: creating real impact in a fast-changing communications landscape.

From advanced cloud communications to strategic insight and telco transformation, these sponsors aren’t just backing the event—they’re shaping the future of CPaaS, network APIs, and AI-driven engagement.

Speakers

And to match that energy, we’re also confirming our first four speakers:

  • Mike Mills – MD Service Providers at Gamma
  • Hélène Vigue – Identity & Data Director at GSMA
  • Al Balasco – SVP Communication Solutions at Radisys
  • Ferry Grijpink – partner at McKinsey, specializing in Network APIs and ethical AI

Expect sharp insights, bold ideas, and fresh perspectives from these industry leaders. Each of them brings a unique angle to the CASA25 themes, including agentic AI, go-to-market evolution, programmable networks, and intelligent engagement.

This is just the beginning. More speakers and sponsors will be announced in the coming weeks, but if this early lineup is any indication, CASA25 is going to be unlike anything we’ve done before.

We’ll be back soon with more updates—including how to join, participate, or bring your team.

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Conference
[ June 14, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

Elevating Industry Insights: The Power of Analyst and Advisory Partners at CASA25

In a world where industry events can sometimes feel like a parade of pay-to-play sponsor presentations, CASA25 takes a different approach.

While we absolutely love our C-level participants and sponsors for their incredible insights, we also believe in balancing the program with perspectives and panel sessions from top industry analysts and impact-driven consultants. This helps us keep the focus on learning, sharing, and connecting—rather than presenting and selling—and ensures our attendees walk away engaged and with fresh ideas and real value.

And let’s be honest, the fact that these world-class analysts choose to partner with us? That speaks volumes about the quality and impact of the event!

We’re thrilled to welcome an incredible lineup of analysts this year, including:

  • Raul Castanon – S&P Global
  • Melissa Holtz – IDC
  • Darius Singh – STL Partners
  • Andrew Collinson – Connective Insight
  • Nick Lane – MobileSquared

These brilliant minds bring a wealth of insight and energy, helping shape conversations that push our industry forward.

Alongside them, we’re lucky to work with some fantastic advisory partners who are all about making impact happen. These include Mach49, Match-Maker Ventures, Creo Solutions, The Next Cloud, and McKinsey. They’re committed to helping our members turn inspiration into action—with strategies that work and stories that resonate.

Together, this vibrant mix of analysts and consultants transforms CASA25 into something more than a conference. It becomes a hub of collaboration, innovation, and momentum for the future of communications.

Stay tuned for more updates!

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Conference
[ June 14, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

Media Spotlight: CPaaSAA x Today Digital Partnership, UC Awards, and CASA25 Visibility

We’re excited to announce that Today Digital is joining CASA25 as an official media partner! This is a big step forward for our member-only event, as it means that for the first time, the broader industry will get a glimpse into what makes CASA special—through editorial coverage on the UC Today, CX Today, and AI Today platforms.

Over the next few months, we’ll be working closely with their editorial team to spotlight our CASA25 sponsors, explore key industry trends, and shine a light on the people and ideas shaping the future of CPaaS, AI, and Intelligent Engagement. And during the week of CASA25 in September, they’ll be reporting live from the event, sharing highlights and insights with their global audience.

This partnership is about more than visibility—it’s also about celebrating excellence. As part of the collaboration, Rob Kurver, founding partner of CPaaSAA, is joining the jury for the UC Awards 2025. This year’s awards will include a dedicated CPaaS category, and we’re inviting our members to participate!

To support this, we’ve secured a special 10% discount on entry fees for CPaaS providers who want to submit their solutions for consideration. Winners will not only receive industry-wide recognition, but we’ll also spotlight them during CASA25—giving them an extra boost within our growing ecosystem.

👉 Use discount code UCA25RS when submitting your entry for the UC Awards CPaaS category.

The CPaaSAA community continues to grow and mature, and partnerships like this one help connect our member-only initiatives with the broader market. We look forward to seeing our members take the stage—both in the UC Awards and at CASA25 this September.

[ June 13, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

GSMA joins CASA25: A Global Partner for Real-World Impact

We’re incredibly proud to announce that GSMA—arguably the most influential voice in the global mobile ecosystem—has joined as a sponsor of CASA25.

This is more than just a logo on the page. It’s a powerful signal of alignment. GSMA has been a driving force behind the Open Gateway initiative, standardizing telco capabilities into globally interoperable APIs. And now, they’re not just watching the CPaaSAA movement—they’re actively participating.

Telco Transformation & Network APIs

GSMA’s involvement spans the full CASA25 experience. On Tuesday, they’ll join us as we dive into Telco Transformation and Go-To-Market strategies. That afternoon, we’ll co-host a joint workshop on Network APIs—exploring what they are, why they matter, and how telcos and partners can actually monetize them. In the evening, GSMA is sponsoring the CASA Social Program, helping bring the community together in a relaxed and meaningful setting. Then on Wednesday morning, they’re organizing and sponsoring the Open Gateway Analyst Summit, which we’re proud to co-create with them. It’s shaping up to be a high-impact session focused on real use cases, learnings from the field, and the road ahead.

The collaboration doesn’t stop there. GSMA’s involvement reflects a growing partnership. We’ve been aligning on use cases, sharing learnings, and working together on everything from the case directory to the Certified Playbook. Our shared mission is clear: help telcos succeed by connecting them with developers, CPaaS platforms, aggregators, and contact centers—with practical, monetizable use cases.

Telco Engagement

We’re also excited that as part of their sponsorship, GSMA will invite 10 telcos that are not yet CPaaSAA members to join the full CASA25 experience. This creates space for new voices and more diverse contributions, mixing ecosystems in ways that reflect the future of our industry.

For us, GSMA’s support is a milestone. Just two years ago, we launched CPaaSAA to raise awareness. Last year, we pushed to get Network APIs on the agenda. And now, in Year Three, we’re moving to impact—working side by side with global players like GSMA to make it real.

We’re thankful for their trust and partnership. And we’re just getting started.

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Conference
[ June 5, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

CASA25: The Final Chapter of the CPaaS Trilogy?

Every trilogy has its moment of truth. For the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance, CASA25 is that moment. After a first chapter full of insights, and a second driven by inspiration, this third CASA event is all about impact. The energy is real, the momentum is building, and the industry is ready.

Chapter One: Insights

CASA23 laid the groundwork. We launched the State of CPaaS report, invited leading analysts, and helped the industry define what CPaaS could become. It was about listening, learning, and gathering insights.

Chapter Two: Inspiration

At CASA24, we saw those insights turn into action. From the Service Provider Playbook to real-world go-to-market strategies, members showed what’s possible when great ideas meet smart execution. Inspiration flowed from the stage, but also from hallway conversations and working group debates.

Chapter Three: Impact

Now, at CASA25, we’re entering the chapter of impact. In today’s dynamic and fast-moving world, we’re witnessing a broader shift toward more intelligent engagement—driven by AI, changing customer expectations, and the geopolitical realities reshaping how we communicate, connect, and build trust across digital channels.

This year, we’re focusing on four key themes:

— Network APIs: moving from promise to deployment, enabling new services and monetization models.

— AI: shifting from buzz to business impact, especially through agentic workflows and orchestration.

— Go-to-market: evolving strategies with channels, marketplaces, and co-selling becoming essential.

— Trust: tackling identity, compliance, security, and sovereignty in a world where geopolitical tensions and digital threats are reshaping what ‘trust’ really means.

And unlike past editions with two or three parallel tracks, this year we’re simplifying the program to focus on impact. One main stage for inspiration and insights. One workshop track for hands-on sessions in smaller groups. Less talk, more doing.

The Journey Continues

We’ve come a long way from a handful of passionate founders. CASA25 will bring together nearly two hundred industry leaders to do the work—build, share, test ideas, and leave with momentum. The journey continues, but the impact is already real.

If you’ve been part of this journey since CASA23 or CASA24, you know what to expect—candor, connection, and real collaboration. Make sure CASA25 is on your calendar. If this will be your first, don’t miss what many are calling the most impactful CPaaS event in the world. The trilogy might be wrapping up—but what comes next is even bigger.

[ May 23, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

A Summit Within the Summit: GSMA Analyst Summit at CASA25

At CASA25, we’re building more than a conference—we’re curating a CPaaS Exploration Week. And this year, that journey doesn’t end on Tuesday. We’re proud to host something truly special on Day Three: the GSMA Analyst Summit, fully powered by GSMA Open Gateway.

This isn’t just a bonus day. It’s a strategic extension of the CASA25 experience—a summit within the summit—where the future of Network APIs, telco evolution, and the intelligent CPaaS stack is explored with the sharpest minds in the room.

Why It Matters

We’ve long said that CPaaS, Network APIs, and AI are converging fast.

Telcos are shifting from connectivity to orchestration. Voice is back. Identity is everything. And APIs are no longer side projects—they’re becoming the backbone of intelligent engagement.

GSMA Open Gateway has been pushing this forward at global scale. And we share the same mission:

Grow the CPaaS market to $100B+ by 2030.

This Analyst Summit is one more way we align around that vision—bringing analysts, telcos, and platform players together to reflect, debate, and shape what comes next.

The Synergy

This collaboration just makes sense.

Tuesday at CASA25 already leans into telco, GTM models, and Network API momentum. The Showcase Challenge will highlight real-world use cases powered by APIs and AI. Then, we close the main event with drinks—and open Wednesday morning with insight.

The Analyst Summit is led and programmed by GSMA, with invitations handled by their team—but the audience is already half in the room. CASA25 brings analysts, Open Gateway partners, telcos, and disruptors together. GSMA adds structure, depth, and global reach.

How to Attend

The GSMA Analyst Summit is invite-only.

If you’re a telco, analyst, or ecosystem player with a stake in Network APIs and intelligent infrastructure, this is where you need to be.

All invitations are coordinated by GSMA.

Contact Justin Paul (GSMA Open Gateway) to request access or explore your role in the agenda.

The Big Picture

This is the first of what we hope will be many special summits within CASA.

Think of it as a breakout built for alignment—inside the broader wave of innovation we’re all pushing forward.

Join us for CASA25. Stay for the Summit. Help us shape what’s next.